German ultimatum to Belgium

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The German ultimatum to Belgium was a diplomatic note handed over on August 2, 1914 from the government of the German Empire to the government of the Kingdom of Belgium , in which free passage through Belgian lands was required. Should Belgium reject this, the German Reich will regard the neighboring country as an enemy. The document stands at the beginning of the First World War and was a logical consequence of the German military planning in the prewar period, which can be traced back to the Schlieffen Plan .

background

The July crisis that followed the assassination attempt in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 had come to such a head after the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 that the Russian Empire declared the general mobilization of its armed forces on July 30 . August declared war on Russia. With this decision, the threshold of a major European conflict was crossed, since Russia was linked to France by a military alliance .

The basis of the German military planning for such a conflict was the Schlieffen Plan of 1905, which provided for an invasion of France through neutral Belgium. Belgian neutrality was guaranteed by the major European powers , including Prussia, in the London Protocol in 1839 .

The note was drafted by Chief of Staff Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke and sent to the Foreign Office on July 29 , where it was edited and supplemented by the director of the Politics Department, Wilhelm von Stumm . It was not sent directly to the Belgian government, but sent sealed by Feldjäger courier to the envoy in Brussels, Claus von Below-Saleske , together with instructions to keep it safe until another telegram instruction. On August 2, the instruction to hand over the ultimatum followed on the same day at 8 p.m., together with the note that the Belgian response was expected within 12 hours and not 24 hours, as stated in the originally sent text.

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(Passages that have been deleted compared to the originally sent text are marked as blocked .)

“The imperial government has reliable news about the intended deployment of French forces on the Meuse in the Givet - Namur route. They leave no doubt as to France's intention to advance against Germany through Belgian territory. The imperial government cannot help but fear that Belgium, in spite of its best will, will not be able to repel a French advance with such great prospect of success that it will provide sufficient security against the threat to Germany. It is a self-preservation imperative for Germany to forestall the enemy attack. The German Government would therefore regretfully if Belgium saw an act of hostility against itself in the fact that the measures of its opponents compelled Germany to enter Belgian territory to resist. To avoid any misinterpretation, the imperial government declares the following:

1. Germany does not intend any hostility towards Belgium. If Belgium is willing to adopt benevolent neutrality vis-à-vis Germany in the forthcoming war, the German government undertakes not only to guarantee the kingdom's ownership and independence in full when concluding peace , it is even prepared to accept any territorial compensation claims of the kingdom at the expense of France to meet in the most benevolent manner .
2. Germany undertakes, subject to the above condition, to vacate the territory of the kingdom again as soon as peace is concluded.
3. If Belgium is friendly, Germany is ready, in agreement with the royal Belgian authorities, to purchase all the needs of its troops for cash and to compensate for any damage that might be caused by German troops.

If Belgium were to oppose the German troops in a hostile manner, especially if their actions were to cause difficulties through the resistance of the Meuse fortifications or the destruction of the railways, roads, tunnels or other engineering structures, Germany will, to her regret, be compelled to regard the Kingdom of Belgium as an enemy. In this case Germany would not be able to assume any obligations to the kingdom, but would have to leave the regulation of the relationship between the two states to the decision of the arms. [...] "

Rejection and consequences

King Albert and his government listened to the ultimatum in disbelief; Minister Paul Hymans felt like a "kick in the stomach". The request, which was experienced as brutal, was unanimously rejected, with the Belgian government declaring in Berlin on August 3rd that it would “oppose any desecration of neutrality with deep amazement”. On the same day, Germany declared war on France. In the night of August 3rd to 4th, German troops advanced and broke Belgian neutrality. The British government issued an ultimatum to Germany on August 4th which, for failure to comply, led to a declaration of war on Germany.

The Belgian army was small, poorly equipped and unable to cope with the task of stopping an army more than ten times its size. Liege fell on August 7th , but the first storming of the city failed, which the Allies interpreted as a victory. Brussels and Ghent were taken on August 20, Namur and Mons on August 23 , Antwerp surrendered on October 9, and the coastal cities of Zeebrugge and Ostend surrendered on October 15.

On August 9, 1914, Berlin made a reconciliation proposal to Brussels, asking Belgium to accept the German superiority. The proposal was outraged and rejected. At the end of August 1914, the Germans established the General Government of Belgium , which wanted to use the occupied country specifically and hard for the German war supply.

Although the Belgian army ultimately only delayed the Schlieffen Plan by days, their resolute resistance surprised the German leadership and called the British forces into the country. At the end of October 1914, the Belgian army itself succeeded in stabilizing the front at the mouth of the Yser by flooding the river plain and stopping the German march. Almost all of Belgian territory was already under German occupation at this point. The strip of land from Nieuwpoort on the North Sea via Ieper to the French border near Lille was to remain Belgian until the end of the war.

The invasion and occupation of Belgium was accompanied from the beginning by riots by German troops, such as hostage-taking and shooting, burning of houses and deportations. Germany gave armed resistance acts by Belgian non-combatants as the reason for this, but this has never been proven. Conversely, these events, described by the Allies as the " Rape of Belgium " and sometimes distorted into the grotesque, played an important role in mobilizing the population in the Allied states, in addition to the actual breach of treaty itself. International outrage aroused the wanton set fire of the University Library in Leuven by the Germans.

For Belgium, the rejection of the ultimatum and participation in the war meant that after the war it was awarded the German areas around Eupen and Malmedy. The Belgian economy, however, still the fifth largest in the world in 1914, would never fully recover from the targeted looting.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The German documents on the outbreak of war in 1914 , Volume II, 1921, pp. 98-100. Deletions according to Volume III, p. 122 f.
  2. ↑ Sophie De Schaepdrijver, The Great War. The kingdom of Belgium during the First World War, p. 56, Verlag Atlas Amsterdam 1997.
  3. ↑ Sophie De Schaepdrijver, The Great War. The kingdom of Belgium during the First World War, Verlag Atlas Amsterdam 1997, p. 58.
  4. ↑ Sophie De Schaepdrijver, The Great War. The kingdom of Belgium during the First World War, Verlag Atlas Amsterdam 1997, p. 69.
  5. ↑ Sophie De Schaepdrijver, The Great War. The kingdom of Belgium during the First World War, Verlag Atlas Amsterdam 1997, p. 72.
  6. ↑ Sophie De Schaepdrijver, The Great War. The kingdom of Belgium during the First World War, Verlag Atlas Amsterdam 1997, p. 11.